


Accidentally in Love

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 16:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9449279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: Several months ago, concerned by Jemma’s ongoing panic attacks, Daisy had insisted she seek out a roommate. Except when Jemma showed up to meet the top candidate, she learned Daisy was simultaneously trying to set her up with Trip’s best friend. (”What?! You’d still end up living with someone!”) They’d spent the whole date plotting ways to get back at Daisy and Trip and settled on fake dating.What Jemma hadn’t anticipated was actually really liking Fitz. She hadn’t expected him to be irreverent in a way that made her feel comfortable around him. She hadn’t expected how easily he would make her laugh or how eagerly she’d look forward to their fake dates or how his hand on the small of her back would make her stomach swoop.She certainly hadn’t expected that waking up with his warm ear over her heart would make the panic stop.**previously published in my drabbles collection!**





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Per an anon's suggestion, I'm moving series over from my drabbles collections to un-clutter it a bit. But I'm only moving completed series. If you see an uncompleted one over there that you'd like to see moved into its own fic, please let me know.

Jemma woke with the usual swell of night panic, the unnameable untraceable terror filling her lungs as her eyes snapped open to darkness.

She was ready to scramble across the bed to fumble for the light, to sit trembling for a few minutes and then lay awake for another hour, when she realized she wasn’t in bed, and the warmth on top of her wasn’t from blankets.

As her eyes adjusted, little details came into focus: the slight glint of moonlight on soft curls, a trail of drool down her shirt, the paisley fabric of her secondhand couch. Bigger details, too, resolved themselves: a hand resting on her hip, toes tickling her ankle, a person squeezed next to – but mostly on top of – her.

The last thing she remembered was Fitz’s head drooping towards her shoulder as they watched _The Exorcist_ with Daisy and Trip. Apparently they’d both fallen asleep, and their friends had left, and somehow they’d ended up like this.

Jemma’s breathing slowed, matching Fitz’s, as she traced a finger gently down his arm, the fabric of his cardigan catching a bit. She wished his face were tilted up a bit more, so she could see his peaceful and no doubt dopey expression, but she didn’t want to wake him. She didn’t want him to be embarrassed by the way his face was pillowed on her breasts, but more than that, she didn’t want him to move.

Several months ago, concerned by Jemma’s ongoing panic attacks, Daisy had insisted she seek out a roommate. Except when Jemma showed up to meet the top candidate, she learned Daisy was simultaneously trying to set her up with Trip’s best friend. (”What?! You’d still end up living with someone!”) They’d spent the whole date plotting ways to get back at Daisy and Trip and settled on fake dating.

What Jemma hadn’t anticipated was actually really liking Fitz. She hadn’t expected him to be irreverent in a way that made her feel comfortable around him. She hadn’t expected how easily he would make her laugh or how eagerly she’d look forward to their fake dates or how his hand on the small of her back would make her stomach swoop.

She certainly hadn’t expected that waking up with his warm ear over her heart would make the panic stop.

They’d thus far avoided all but the most chaste kisses, but Jemma wondered all the time – _all the time_ – what it would really be like to melt into him. To show him how she felt.

She stared up at the dark ceiling, blinking back tears. Their entire relationship was built on a joke, and she was sure once Daisy and Trip found out about it they’d all have a good laugh and things would go back to _before_. She’d already found stupid excuses to prevent the reveal several weeks in a row; frankly she was surprised Fitz hadn’t called her out on it yet. But the idea of no longer being allowed to hug him and flirt with him and scheme with him was unbearable.

If only Fitz felt the same way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clearly when I wrote these drabbles I didn't pay attention to tense consistency between chapters lolololol and I don't feel like fixing it

“Waffles or pancakes?”

Jemma stops the whisking the batter and contemplates his question very seriously, with a little scrunch of her nose that draws attention to the brown sugar she’s accidentally streaked across her cheek. “I think waffles. More versatility in toppings, because the little pockets will-”

“Collect liquids and solids alike, yeah,” Fitz finishes. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“Then why did you ask me?” Jemma laughs, bumping him with her elbow.

Fitz pretends his knife has slipped and gets a moment of worry before Jemma realizes it’s strawberry juice, not blood, on his finger, and she groans and rolls her eyes.

She’s come over to his apartment for breakfast-for-dinner, which seems more harmless than going out for Italian or whatever it is _real_ couples do. But still, she’s grinning up at him even though there’s no one here to see, and the moment settles into something softer, a different kind of smile, a gaze they both hold too long, shoulders still touching.

Jemma’s phone vibrates on the counter and they both jump.

Fitz busies himself buttering the pan as Jemma swipes her phone with a knuckle, not having bothered to wash her hands.

“Oh, dear,” she murmurs.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing!” she says, too quickly, her voice a little high-pitched. “Just… Anders, from work, asked me out for drinks tomorrow.”

“Like a date?” Fitz asks carefully.

“I think so.” Jemma frowns down at her phone. “I’ll just tell him no – because Trip and Daisy would surely know the jig is up then, wouldn’t they?” she explains quickly.

Fitz feels nauseous, and in that moment he knows they need to end this farce. He can ogle and adore Jemma all day and she will still think it’s all done in jest, to fool their friends.

“You should go,” he announces. He grabs the bowl of batter and dumps some onto the waffle iron, but his hands are shaking so badly it spills over the edges. “We wouldn’t want our stupid little prank to get in the way of your actual happiness.”

Jemma doesn’t answer for a long time. Fitz assumes she’s typing out her text, but when he turns around, she’s watching him.

She blushes and looks away. “Thank you, Fitz. I’ll do that, then.”

The waffles burn, but Fitz has lost his appetite anyway.

 

A knock at Fitz’s door the next evening makes him grown. He’s just settled in on the couch with plans to order some crappy pizza and watch a documentary on Netflix.

Jemma stands in the doorway holding a bag of sushi rice and a packet of nori. If she’s come to hang out before her date, he’s not sure he can–

“Sushi?” she interrupts his thoughts, raising the supplies she’s brought. “I, em, I didn’t really want to go out with Anders anyway, and Daisy doesn’t like the fishy taste of the seaweed, so…”

They make a few sweet potato rolls and watch Jeopardy and end up on the couch doing the New York Times crossword puzzle together, Jemma’s chin pressed into Fitz’s shoulder as she leans into him to point out answers she knows.

Next time, Fitz promises himself as Jemma flips her hair in an imitation of an actress whose name they’re having trouble remembering. Next time she gets asked on a date, he’ll tell her they should stop. Next time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wibbelkind asked:  
> Okay, since you just established Fitzsimmons in a 'verse where Jemma has (apparently frequent) panic attacks ... Can you write a continuation of that where she has an actual attack and Fitz helps her deal with it?

They’ve just gotten to the concert when Jemma feels it coming on, a tide of sensation tugging her in the opposite direction from the crowd flowing towards the entrance. She stutters to a stop amidst the press of bodies and Trip collides right into her.

“We gotta keep going, Jemma, or we’ll be crushed!” he shouts to her, trying to move her forward.

“I need to use the restroom,” she blurts out.

She’s not good at fighting her attacks but she’s good at hiding them. Even Daisy, who’s seen this happen before, might not notice anything beyond a little pinch around her mouth. And Fitz – three months of fake dating and he still doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to spook him.

“Let’s get seats first and then you can go!” Daisy yells, grabbing her wrist.

“I really need to–” She chokes on the words as a heavy ache pounds her chest and the entire venue seems to spin and if she doesn’t get out of here soon–

Fitz, who’d been bringing up the rear, is beside her, shielding her from the people shoving past them. Everything’s gone a bit fuzzy, a bit distorted, so she can’t see his face properly, but it’s tilted towards her and his hand finds her own trembling, sweating one where it’s gesturing frantically towards the port-a-potties.

“I’m going to take Jemma outside,” she hears him tell the others, his grip tightening on her fingers. She clings to the sensation, a reminder that she’s not about to go spinning into space. She can’t really follow the conversation – one of the others protests that it’s pouring and they’ll be soaked and the concert’s about to start anyway and Fitz snaps that he doesn’t care and _why are they all fighting this is my fault–_

An arm is around her shoulders and guiding her back the way they came. She drags along until they burst through the bubbling crowd and she tastes fresh air and rain on her face and gasps, chest heaving, unable to get enough.

“What do you need me to do, Jemma?” Fitz asks as if from a distance.

She squeezes his hand, trying to locate him. “I need – I need–” But her whole body is shaking and she can’t put even a half-thought together.

“Okay, Jemma, look at me.” His hands are on her face, she can tell that much, and she blinks against the rain in her eyes, wanting to see him. “I want you to raise your arms from your sides, and then lower them. Can you do that? And as you do, breathe in and out. Look, I’ll do it with you.”

That means he lets go of her, leaving her instantly bereft, but there’s a familiarity to what he’s asking her to do, like she’s read it in a book.

She does as he asks, lifting her arms until the are perpendicular to the rest of her body and inhaling as she does so, then exhaling as she lowers them.

“That’s it,” Fitz says, mirroring her. “In, out. Up, down.”

He’s done this before, she realizes as her breathing evens and the earth stops tilting. These are all classic techniques for easing someone down from a panic attack, and Fitz, with his very-not-people-oriented studies and career, has no reason to know them. But there he is, looking a bit silly as he flaps his arms, eyes wide with worry.

“Better?” he asks gently.

She nods but, as always in the wake of these attacks, she feels drained and weak, and for all that she has fought to seem strong and stable in front of him, she begins to cry.

“I’m so sorry, Fitz,” she gasps, even as she forces a tremulous smile. “I’m so sorry you had to see me like that. I know it’s not part of your contract.”

They joke about this a lot, The Contract: the rapidly unraveling, increasingly irrelevant terms to their already thinly-defined fake relationship.

“Screw the contract,” he murmurs.

He takes her hand as they walk to the car – he doesn’t need to, but he does. He says he will come back for Daisy and Trip when the concert is over, but in the meantime he drives her home and brushes out her rain-soaked hair and makes her tea and dims the lights when she starts to get sleepy. She has always tried to keep her panic invisible but here Fitz has seen it and is caring for her, is not running away. 


	4. Chapter 4

“You really don’t have to keep me company,” Jemma told Daisy as they sidled along the front row of the mostly-empty bleachers. “You should be out there playing.”

“Nah, I got kicked off the team,” Daisy shrugged, waving the bright pink spoon that had come with their ice cream cups. “Something about embarrassing everyone with how good I am.”

“You did not!” Jemma laughed.

“It’s true! Ask Trip.”

Jemma rolled her eyes but didn’t push it. Truthfully, she thought Daisy felt bad for not being attentive when Jemma had had her last panic attack, and though she didn’t blame her friend, she also didn’t want to prompt a discussion.

“Look at us,” Daisy chuckled, “sitting on the sidelines together, cheering on our boyfriends while they dominate a badminton tournament. This is the dream, girl.”

Jemma opened her mouth. She’d promised herself – without consulting Fitz – that she’d talk to Daisy, tell her the truth. Because if she kept going down this road with Fitz, she’d be fully in love by the time they made their revelation and everything would go to hell in a handbasket.

But just then, Fitz scored the winning point for their current match, and he [flung his fists into the air in adorable triumph](http://66.media.tumblr.com/34eaa294a88a5050a8a2d97090197d6e/tumblr_oaxqrkzmj31r9f0gso3_250.gif), his racket clattering across the court. Jemma and Daisy whooped and clapped, and Fitz glanced over with a grin.

Next thing he was jogging towards them, and Jemma only had a second to process Daisy’s catcalls before he leaned over the barrier and kissed her, one hand on the back of her head, like a boyfriend could be expected to do with his girlfriend after a victory.

He tasted like sweat and chapstick and heat radiated from his body, and then he was gone, leaving Jemma’s fingers curling where his collar had been a second before.

“Ow ow!” Daisy called after him. “That’s right, Trip, take notes!”

Jemma pressed a trembling hand to her lower lip, still salty from Fitz’s kiss. Her gaze followed him as he trotted away, as he stooped to get his racket and as he caught Trip’s enthusiastic high-five.

“Aren’t you glad I set you two up?” Daisy chortled.

There it was. The perfect opening.

She squeezed her eyes shut, though the outline of Fitz still burned against her eyelids, and said quickly, “Daisy, Fitz and I aren’t actually dating. We’ve been pretending, to wind you and Trip up. A little prank, as punishment for trying to fix us up against our will.”

She expected an explosion, indignation, protestations – but Daisy just snorted.

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’m serious!” Jemma cried, eyes flying open. “We plotted the whole thing out, that day we first had dinner–”

Daisy was shaking her head and smirking, though her exact expression was difficult to ascertain as she struggled with brainfreeze from the giant glob of ice cream she’d just inhaled. “Girl, whatever you think you’re doing, you and Fitz are _definitely_ dating.”

Simultaneous soaring joy and crushing panic filled Jemma, and she suffered in silence as Fitz dove across the court to bat the birdy up for Trip’s excellent delivery.

Then, Daisy twisted to her and yelped, “Hold up! Does this mean you guys haven’t had sex?!”


	5. Chapter 5

“Let’s split up to maximize the variety of our haul!” Daisy’s practically bouncing as she walks backwards away from them, dragging Trip with her. “We’ll start at the far side of the orchard and meet back up in the middle!”

Fitz chuckles as they rush away in their matching plaid flannels button-ups, which Daisy had insisted were the required uniform for apple-picking.

He glances over at Jemma to find her studying the toes of her Converse with a slight frown. She’s been quiet and solemn all morning, barely responding to his groans of how ridiculous he looks in plaid, even though it was a prime opening for teasing about his Scottish-ness, and he’d stolen bites from her pancakes at IHOP without getting stabbed in the hand.

He wonders if it’s just one of those days, when anxiety seems to drag her somewhere the rest of them can’t quite reach, when she has trouble focusing and worries her bottom lip with her front teeth until he has to stop her for fear she’ll make herself bleed.

“C’mon, you heard the woman,” he murmurs, slipping his hand into hers and tugging her towards the row of Gala trees. “We have to get our work in before the school groups show up and take all the good ones.”

He’s decided he can do this, even after they fake-break-up. However he feels about her, however her smiles make his stomach the good kind of nauseous, however the dark half-moons under her eyes twist his heart with sharp pain, he can be the person who takes her distressed 3AM phone calls and holds her hand platonically and tries her ridiculous, disgusting green smoothies. It’s been done before, loving someone even if you can’t be with them that way, and he likes spending time with her too much and cares too much to just walk away when the farce ends. He will stay, in whatever capacity she will have him.

She holds the basket while he climbs the ladder and starts handing down apples. He considers pretending to fall off, just to catch her attention, but he knows she can’t help her distance.

“Look,” he chuckles as he clambers down and twists the apple he’s holding her for inspection. “It looks like a little bum.”

She smiles weakly. He can’t take it anymore.

“Hey, Jem,” he says softly, bending his knees slightly so he can get closer to her level. “We don’t have to stay, if you’re not feeling this – I know Daisy wanted to do the cider-making demo but–”

“Daisy knows,” Jemma blurts out, and her whole face drains of color as her eyes finally focus on his.

“Sorry?”

“Daisy knows,” she repeats breathlessly, hugging the basket to her stomach. “About us. About us not being…us. I told her.”

“Oh.” Fitz steps back from her, setting his hands on his hips to steady himself physically where he can’t emotionally. Has she been stressing about this all morning? Why would it be stressing her out? “What d’you think we should–”

“Fitzsimmons!” Daisy comes bounding up, waving a half-eaten apple, as Trip trails behind, lugging an overweighted basket. “Yo, you guys are _slow_. We got, like, six times that.” She beams between them, unaware of or possibly purposefully ignoring Fitz’s furrowed brow and Jemma’s wide eyes still intent on his face. “Let’s bounce back to the barn and see what else they’ve got! I think there’s a corn maze.”

Jemma opens her mouth, and Fitz fears and craves whatever she’s about to say in equal parts, but Daisy’s hauling her away and Fitz is left standing there among the trees, the stupid bum-apple in one hand.


	6. Chapter 6

“Sorry to interrupt things,” Daisy murmurs, hauling Jemma by their linked arms back across the parking lot of the orchard. “It just did _not_ look like that conversation was going well. We should do some prep – you always liked to rehearse ahead of time.”

“Daisy, that’s not…” Jemma catches herself before she says something she’ll regret.

She’s not mad at Daisy, not precisely. But Jemma had mentally prepared herself for the inevitable let-down of the conversation she’d needed all day to work herself up to having with Fitz and Daisy’s well-intentioned rescue has toppled the scaffolding holding her self-confidence together.

“I’ll just stick by you during the demo and then we can–”

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” Jemma whispers, and though she hears Daisy and Trip and probably Fitz calling after her, she breaks away and hurtles instead into the hay maze.

It’s a mistake, she realizes instantly, though she keeps running. She wants to run and run and run and _run_ and escape and keep going until her thoughts calm down and her heart stops pounding so loudly and she can be rational for a moment. She deserves that for herself, of course. But she also doesn’t want to have _that_ conversation with Fitz when she feels this way.

But it’s a mistake because the turns of the maze are sharp, the stretches of path short. She only grows more frenzied; there is no relief. And now she’s trapped in this barren, foreign landscape of unfriendly hay bales, her own desperation buffeting her from every side like an unforgiving wind. 

She doesn’t want to be here.

She doesn’t…she doesn’t want to be alone.

“Jemma?”

His voice reaches her from a distance and she turns automatically to the sound, her hands flat against the side of a bale, wanting to just push down the walls between them.

“Jemma?”

“Fitz!” she calls back. He may be at the epicenter of her panic but he has somehow, accidentally, effortlessly, extraordinarily become her best friend and she wants him here. She has never wanted to let anyone in like this before.

“Jemmmmaaaa–”

He’s close now, and even as she calls his name back, not caring that several children walk by looking at her like she’s mad, she rounds the corner and nearly bumps right into him. She brings her hands up between them to stop the collision and he catches them with his own hands, interlacing their fingers so naturally.

“Hey, you trying to lose me?” he teases.

“Trying to lose myself,” she admits, and to his credit he only smiles gently in understanding.

“D’you think they’ll notice if we never come out?” Fitz whispers conspiratorially.

“Probably not, Trip’s so in love with Daisy and Daisy’s so in love with cider donuts…”

“I like it here.” Fitz peers over her head as if they’re not both so short they could _actually_ stay lost in the maze forever. “You get privacy but fresh air, and the smell’s very… well, it’s a bit like a farm, but the good parts, not the manure parts… We’d have to rearrange some of the bales; whoever designed this house clearly had no architectural training.”

“Fitz, stop, it’s okay,” Jemma chuckles, ducking her head towards his chest. “You don’t need to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend like we’re not both avoiding a very important conversation.”

“But I’ve never done a corn maze before!” he protests.

God, she lov–

 _No_.

“Fitz, we should discuss this.”

He brings their linked hands up between them, brings her knuckles almost up to his lips and studies her thumbnail with a frown she can’t decipher. At last he breathes out against her skin. “There’s nothing to discuss, Jemma.”

“I can’t – what if we – what about – _I don’t want you to leave_ ,” she bursts out. Let him interpret that as he will.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assures her, obviously confused.

“No, but…” When had it become so difficult for her to talk to him? Perhaps around the time she nearly admitted to herself just how profoundly Fitz factored into her life. “I don’t want to _lose_ you. And I only told Daisy because I thought I could bail before it was too late but it’s been too late for weeks and –” She stutters to a stop, catching the look on Fitz’s face. “I don’t know what to do,” she admits. He’s still stroking his thumb across the back of her hand and she focuses on the top button of his ridiculous plaid flannel to keep from crying. “In an ideal world we’d realize we hadn’t been pretended this whole time. But I know when you agreed to do this with me you weren’t expecting–”

“I’m not pretending.”

“–so of course I’ll… what?”

“I’m not pretending. Haven’t been, for a long time.”

“O-oh.”

“I know it’s unlikely that of all the potential universes this is the ideal one, but… if I’m understanding you correctly, and if Daisy’s shouted ‘she likes you, idiot!’ as I ran after you is true, then… it’s certainly the best universe.”

He’s smiling though he looks terrified, now, and it’s that disjointed expression which tips her from crying out of relief to laughing. She finally breaks his grip on her hands but it’s only to throw her arms around his neck as she laughs into the fabric of his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” he asks uncertainly. With a hand on the back of her head he gently moves her back so he can see her face. “Are you having some sort of episode?”

“This whole time,” she chokes out, gripping him for support, “we thought we were pranking Trip and Daisy, and the joke was on us!”

“You’re insane,” he murmurs fondly. His eyes flick up to her hair and then his hand is there, warm and just slightly coarse against the curve of her cheek. His fingers brush aside a strand and pulls out a piece of hay, which he holds up for her inspection, only to find her gazing up at him.

“But you like me,” she whispers. Just to check.

“I like you very much,” he replies softly.

The hay falls somewhere between them, maybe on Jemma’s shirt – she doesn’t much care. For the first time she is kissing Fitz without counting the seconds for which an appropriate fake kiss may last; she is letting her fingers slip down the back of his collar and relishing his reaction; she is savoring Fitz’s arms about her lower back without a trace of dread; she is grinning against his lips because it turns out kissing is a very effective way to decisively eliminate vestigial symptoms of a panic attack.

Daisy can tease them about a ‘roll in the hay’ later. Jemma’s relationship with Fitz just got real.


End file.
